INTRODUCTION

DISPATCHES FROM DYSTOPIA, dispatchesfromdystopia.net, which evolved during the past eight years from the less sharply focused "Outside Agitator's Notebook," has become precisely what this blog's new title and domain name describes. It is an ongoing anthology of reports, analyses, commentaries, photographs and other anti-Capitalist testimony from the Dystopia that Capitalism has made of our world. It's epicenter is the post-humanitarian United States of America: our species' self-inflicted Moron Nation and its empire of global-conquest malevolence, the de facto Fourth Reich, the true birthdate of which will eventually be recognized – if indeed our species somehow miraculously survives the present era – as 22 November 1963.
¶Dispatches thus chronicles our relentless subjugation by Capitalism as it (inevitably) reverts to its traditional might-makes-right savagery and – just as Capitalism previously transformed itself into Italian Fascism and German Nazism – as it now matures into a Nazism of uniquely USian form and content. By examining the details of what is occurring, DfD shows how ours is a Dystopia characterized as much by the mindlessness of Moron Nation's Zieg-Heil-equivalent chanting of “USA! USA! USA!” as by the brutality such chanting invariably celebrates – the genocidal, ultimately ecocidal atrocities the Capitalist Ruling Class perpetrates in the name of “profit,” “growth” and USian “Exceptionalism.”
¶Why “USian” rather than American? Because to call this exceptionally fascist empire “America” is to slander as fascists or Nazis all humanitarian-minded peoples of North and South America who valiantly and often fatally resist USiaNazi enslavement. And, yes, “humanitarian” versus “anti-humanitarian” are the only terms that adequately differentiate the two now eternally hostile subspecies into which Capitalism has finally divided Homo sapiens sapiens. On one side are those of us who cling to the so-called Golden Rule and its variants, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” the ultimate form of which is Marxism's “from each according to ability, too each according to need.” On the other side are the moral imbeciles – Nazis, fascists, Ayn Rand disciples and all the other psychological zombies that are Capitalism's unique and uniquely apocalyptic spawn.
¶But what then is Capitalism? Though traditionally defined as economics, it is in fact the quintessential patriarchal ethos, the diabolical methodology of building a global empire by conquest and genocide both obvious and clandestine, with post-conquest world governance originally patterned after the despotic management of antebellum slave plantations. Capitalism is thus the forefather of fascism and Nazism, its only possible offspring. Behind its seductive cloak of euphemisms and Big Lies (“manifest destiny,” “easy credit,” “economic freedom,” “self-made man,” “entrepreneur,” “no down payment,” “rugged individualist,” “you too can be rich,” “free will,” etc. ad nauseam), Capitalism is the stench of burning flesh and rotting corpses; the shrieks of napalmed children; the despair of families evicted into the permanent degradation, filth, deadly danger of untreated disease and constant fear of enslavement by arrest or kidnapping that defines USian homelessness; the final agonies of maliciously abandoned patients condemned to death by the deliberately genocidal costs of health care.
¶Ultimately Capitalism is the boundless Evil of global dictatorship by the Christian white male One Percent, a tiny, ruthless cabal of Capitalist aristocrats for whom infinite greed is ultimate virtue and for whom the snuff-film sadism of class warfare provides the ultimate entertainment. Under Capitalism's Fukushima-deadly, Ayn Rand credo of serial-killer moral imbecility – absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent and its Ruling Class vassals, zero-tolerance oppression and bottomless poverty for all the rest of us – these obscenely wealthy despots now impose on us their increasingly overt paradigm of Nazi governance. Not that We the (formerly exempt) People should be surprised; the merciless regimen that is now ours is how the Capitalists have always tyrannized our sisters and brothers in America's First Nations, in the USian ghettos and in all the Capitalist victim realms abroad.
¶Moreover our plight is of our own making. We the People long ago surrendered to our Capitalist overlords. We submit to denial of health care that is everywhere else on this planet deemed a human right; we submit to enslavement by debt; to the outsourcing of our jobs; to bankruptcy; to foreclosure; to eviction and homelessness; to imprisonment in numbers hitherto unequaled in human history; and most of all to the biggest Big Lie of all – the suicidal delusion we somehow remain free despite the Capitalists' no-longer-deniable theft of our liberty and their snickering revocation of the few prefaces to economic democracy our now-powerless unions had once managed to win. Our confinement is ensured, not just by our cowardice but by the invisible but inescapable cage of total surveillance: the electronic barbed wire that has reduced our entire planet to a monstrous concentration camp.
¶Cast off as “surplus human capital” when we are deemed no longer exploitable for profit, we are then methodically exterminated. We are slaughtered as cannon-fodder in the empire's endless wars of profit and conquest; we are murdered by the bullets and truncheons of the federalized and militarized local police; we are fatally poisoned by Capitalism's malignant toxification of our environment; we are slain by denials of health care and social services that are in fact deliberate, euphemism-cloaked policies of slow-motion genocide.
¶Meanwhile our overlords pornographically multiply their own wealth by knowingly destroying the planetary conditions upon which all sentient life depends. More recently – as if to demonstrate the infinite magnitude of their Evil by provoking unsurvivable thermonuclear apocalypse (and not coincidentally in fulfillment of a malevolent scheme by Adolf Hitler himself) – they have imposed on the Ukraine the anti-Russian war-mongering and anti-Jewish violence of an avowedly Nazi puppet government. And now, in the person of Donald Trump and his appointees, the USian tyrannosaur has come home to gorge on its final and terminally ironic meal, the denizens of Moron Nation itself, the people who by their prideful ignorance and hatefulness loosed this demonically insatiable monster on the entire world.
But in these times our ability to effectively resist is obstructed not only by the USian regime of inescapable surveillance, but by the dreadful undertow of Moron Nation's intellectual and psychological paralysis: the deliberate deceptions and outright ignorance fostered by the Capitalist “education” system; by Capitalism's “mainstream media” propaganda machine (which is owned by the same smirking plutocrats whose vassal politicians so gleefully oppress us); and by the physical and psychic terrorism of Capitalism's manufactured crises.
¶Yet resist we must. As always, art – sometimes even unwittingly – depicts our present circumstances and so foretells our future. And as it says in a breathtakingly apt, wrenchingly poignant anthem grown increasingly popular far beyond its video-game origin, “shadows fall and hope is gone; steel your heart; the dawn will come.”

"...our relentless subjugation by capitalism..."We the People have been reduced to slavery and serfdom by Capitalist governance -- absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent and their Ruling Class vassals, zero-tolerance oppression for all the rest of us -- and the CIA's Operation Chaos exemplifies Capitalism's darkest and most malevolent aspects.

These are some of the very few photographs that survived the 1983 fire that destroyed my life's work, not just most of my pictures but nearly all my writing including two books in progress and all the associated research. Some of these photos shown here escaped the flames because they were with me in my portfolio case; others were produced digitally from negatives dug out of the rubble a year later. The images of obvious print-quality were made on DuPont Varilure paper, which had the highest silver content of all commercial papers and thus produced such intense tonalities, they often seemed illuminated by their own internal light sources. But that sort of photographic quality is now forever beyond our common reach, either gone like Varilure or so prohibitively expensive it is available only to the obscenely pampered dilettantes who produce the aesthetic pabulum favored by the One Percent. Photography as I knew it is dead -- as dead as my career was after the fire and its ensuing clinical depression -- but this body of work provides a glimpse of what was lost and what might have been. All photos copyright Loren Bliss.

In photography, a sandwich is a collage made by printing two or more negatives simultaneously. Collage is a medium that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember -- probably since I was a child experimenting with finger paints, glue and newspapers -- but I never took it seriously until, sometime in my early 20s and still thinking myself a painter-to-be, I discovered the works of Jasper Johns. Now it seems to me making sandwiches is to conventional photography what poetry is to prose: not just an intellectual exercise, but the opening of a doorway to the Mysterious Otherness I know as the Muse, from whom (sometimes in fulfilment of that McLuhanesque notion of art as prophecy) the currents of real creation invariably flow, whether swift and startling as a lightening strike or slow and soft as cottonwood seeds adrift on subtle summer air. (Collage and photographic sandwiches copyright Loren Bliss 2009-2012.)

When I returned to New York City in 1965 I was immediately impressed by the contrast between the graffiti I had encountered "out in America" -- the South and Middle West -- and what I saw in Manhattan. While the form and content of graffiti is sociologically important – possibly a semiotic indicator without peer -- I found the graffiti of Manhattan singularly appealing, the intellectual and aesthetic equivalents of a long-overdue breath of fresh air, and within a few days I had begun documenting it with 35mm and 120 film. (The opening photograph of this series was obviously made far from Manhattan, but I included it to establish an essential contrast.) Many more details about this particular body of work, which I briefly resumed when I went back to the City again in 1983, then abandoned after that year's career-terminating fire, are in my post of January 7, 2010. Yes I regard the best urban graffiti as genuine art, but too much of it, alas, is nothing more than a human variant on the mammalian practice of marking territory with spurts of urine: "I wuz here." All photos by Loren Bliss, copyright dates as noted.

Supporters of health care reform and a much smaller number of health care reform's opponents -- each faction identified by its picket-signs -- gathered for the "town hall" meeting called by U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) in Lakewood on August 25, 2009. Originally set for Lakewood City Hall, the event was rescheduled and moved to Lang Stadium to accommodate an unprecedented mobilization of pro-reform people. Cops estimated the crowd at about 2500. Photos by Loren Bliss copyright 2009.

Best Site for Suppressed Assassination FactsThe late Mae Brussell was our most relentless researcher into the murder of President John Kennedy and many other such outrages. Her legacy is a damning list of the USian Empire's darkest secrets.

Best, Most Thorough Documentation on the CIA's Destruction of the 1960s Counterculture Ms. Brussel outdid herself in her nobody-dares-publish-it investigative report exposing how the CIA's Operation Chaos destroyed the 1960s Counterculture. (My assumption is the Agency, with its Ivy-League analysts and their knowledge of pagan mythology, recognized the Counterculture's anti-patriarchal, resurrection-of-the-Goddess direction, understood it as a far greater threat to Capitalism than Marxism and responded with the murderous efficiency inherited from Gestapo predecessors.)

Communist Labor Party Communism as it is evolving in the United States after the murder of the American Dream and the slaying of the U.S. experiment in representative democracy.

Consortium News Superb reporting and analysis. Founder/Editor Robert Parry exposed Reagan's Iran-Contra scheming and has been persecuted by the capitalists ever since.

der SpiegelMainstream German newspaper that is often a valuable source of news about Western European politics.

Global ResearchA genuinely independent news site -- neither definitively Left nor Right -- that often covers stories suppressed by U.S. Mainstream Media, which (let us never forget), is owned by the same One Percenters who own the Democratic (sic) and Republican parties and thereby control all U.S. governance at every level.

Gun Owners of America Fanatically hard-Right (and often ChristoFascist as well), it is nevertheless the best source for information about the One Percent's efforts to forcibly disarm the U.S. 99 Percent.

International Marxist Archive All of Marxism's defining texts defiantly uploaded to the Internet by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as its final contribution to humanity's eternal struggle for economic democracy -- without which there is no democracy at all.

RewireProbably the most in-depth coverage of women's issues, LGBTQ issues and general human rights issues available on the U.S. Internet today, bolstered by decidedly professional reportage and editing.

RTFormerly "Russia Today," it accurately covers U.S. news the "mainstream media" propaganda machine routinely suppresses. Its notable work includes the nation's best coverage of the Occupy Movement (2011-2012), and the ongoing struggles of Black Lives Matter, Water Protectors and other such groups against the Empire's now-openly-fascist policies of homeland governance.

Second Amendment FoundationUnmistakably conservative, it is also the best source on legal action in defense of our right to keep and bear arms.

Socialist Worker An informative Marxist website in the United States, with news reporting and analysis that is usually far superior to anything fed us by capitalism's "mainstream media" propaganda machine.

Southern Poverty Law CenterBest source of information on the burgeoning plague of Nazi, ChristoFascist and KuKluxKlan-type hate groups in the USian imperial homeland.

Theocracy WatchCornell University's in-depth source on the escalating campaign to impose zero-tolerance Christian theocracy on the USian Homeland. It is flawed only by its refusal to recognize the Democratic (sic) Party's mostly clandestine collaboration with the openly theocratic Republicans -- a collaboration revealed in frightening detail by Jeff Sharlet's "The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" (Harper: 2008).

Ultra Violet Perhaps the most powerful racially integrated gender-equality organization in the United States.

World Socialist Web Site The day's news, typically with the most in-depth Marxist analysis available on the U.S. Internet -- this despite constant interference by the Empire's privatized, for-profit censorship apparatus.

Unless otherwise noted, all material herein is copyrighted by Loren Bliss and/or Dispatches from Dystopia. Reproduction for non-profit purposes is permitted as long as it identifies the author or photographer and includes a link to the original text. To arrange for-profit reproduction, contact Loren Bliss via the comment facility.

One of the Now-Censored Reports Saysthe Army Lost Track of $6.5 Trillion in Fiscal 2015, a Sum 54 Times Greater Than the $120 Billion Army Budget Approved by Congress. Is This Inept Accounting? Or Is It Governance as Gangsterism, Complete with Under-the-Table Payoffs?

DESPITE OUR NATIONAL MATHOPHOBIA -- and if the two remarkably courageous economics professors who authored this mind-blowing scoop-the-world report for the online 8 December 2017 issue of Forbes magazine are not disappeared by government agents -- these disclosures could evolve into the most devastating scandal in U.S. history.

Yes, math is a big turn-off for many of us, but in this instance the numbers are too important to ignore. Their apparent message is so damning it literally enters the realm of the unthinkable.What the numbers suggest is the federal government is composed of out-of-control bureaucracies granted unlimited ability to print paper money and thereby elevated to veritable omnipotence by whichever cabal of plutocrats is secretly in command.

What the two economists discovered -- initially in a U.S. Army Inspector General's report that was flushed down the Orwell hole almost as soon as one of the economists questioned it -- suggests the U.S. Government is doing the same sort of thing on a trillion-dollar scale. Which prompts two vital questions:

Where did the Army get 54 times more money than Congress budgeted for it?

On what did the Army spend the money?

In keeping with the other worst-of-all-possible-worlds disclosures that in this darkest epoch of our species' history continually monkey-wrench our individual and collective consciousness, it is not at all difficult for me to imagine the most icon-smashing, delusion-destroying answers: that the money came from those Capitalist plutocrats who behind the Big Lie of "American Democracy" are in fact our true overlords -- tyrants as omnipotent as Adolf Hitler, as sadistic as Reinhardt Heydrich and as morally imbecilic as Ted Bundy -- and that the money they gave the Pentagon was spent on murderously clandestine operations wherever they chose to advance the Empire's agenda of world conquest.

As to the use of Meyer Lansky book-keeping by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that too is easily explained: note once more the connections between the real estate industry and the mob (see again the links in my third paragraph, above). For example, in New York City -- something I know from my years in journalism there and across the river in New Jersey -- it was customary to mark up construction budgets by at least 50 percent to cover the requisite payoffs to mobsters, officials and politicians.

And what then might the breathtaking discoveries by economics professors Laurence Kotlikoff and Mark Skidmore actually mean?

If my darkest suspicions are correct, these revelations tell us the atrocities the Empire is inflicting on various target populations at home and abroad are merely logical activities by a criminal enterprise of such all-encompassing magnitude and bottomless evil it has no counterpart in human history.

Which if nothing else gives us a new, I'm-afraid-that-explains-everything definition for "American Exceptionalism."

Please, therefore -- if you haven't done so already -- read and contemplate the reports I linked in my opening two grafs.

(Yes, I'm painfully aware the author of the Truthdig report is a professional comedian -- an occupation that as far as I am concerned casts grave doubt on anything he might present as serious journalism. Thus at first -- despite Truthdig's reputation as a credible news outlet -- I suspected the story might be a hoax. But then I read the Forbes report and the government document preserved therein...)

See also:"The imposition of punitive tariffs on steel and aluminium, and the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement by President Donald Trump, are regarded by the European powers as a major blow to their own interests."

And especially this:"For right-wing Pastor John Hagee, it was a glorious day. In his view, Bible prophecy was being fulfilled and his personal comeback was complete. Here he was delivering the closing prayer at the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. Less than 60 miles away, the Israeli military was slaughtering unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. How could Hagee not be thinking that this event -- engineered and staged by the Trump administration, in coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu -- might be the launching point for the greatest battle ever: the 'End Times'?"

*****

Peace Group Damns U.S. as Sole Perpetrator of Korean and Iranian Crises

"The United States has no one to blame but itself for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) canceling a meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday with the Republic of Korea (RoK) as part of the peace process...Meanwhile, the international community has expressed outrage over the latest manifestations of U.S. gangsterism: Pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran and five other nations, attacking Syria the day before a weapons inspection, and its complicity in the Israeli massacre of more than 50 Palestinians on Monday..."

*****

Venezuelan Election: How Disastrous Will the Empire's Meddling Be?

"Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is the frontrunner in the presidential elections scheduled for May 20. If past pronouncements and practice by the US empire are any indication, every effort will be made to oust an avowed socialist from what is considered the U.S. 'backyard.'"

"I have evaluated Mr. Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, as well as close to 20 other men who were tortured as part of the CIA’s RDI [Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation] program. I am one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture, its effects, and his ongoing suffering,..He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel and designed to break him."

"U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez shot down the federal government’s efforts to strip Daniel Ramirez Medina of his DACA status. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement had arrested and detained Ramirez last year, then falsely claimed that he was affiliated with a gang and arremprted to deport him. He filed suit, alleging that ICE had violated his due process rights. Martinez agreed...What may be most remarkable about Martinez’s decision, though, is its blunt repudiation of ICE’s main claim—that Ramirez is 'gang-affiliated.' The judge did not simply rule against ICE. He accused the agency of lying to a court of law."

"Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson proposed sweeping changes to federal housing subsidies...which would triple rent for the poorest households while making it easier for local housing authorities to impose work requirements on assistance recipients."

Comment:my apology for missing this story when it first broke. My bad.

*****

For-Profit Prisons Boost Income by Enslaving Detained Immigrants

"CoreCivic’s abuse and exploitation of detained immigrants’ labor as part of its profit-making schemes constitute a contemporary form of slavery as we detailed in a submission to the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants."

"Abortion Deserts" Plague U.S. Women in Every Region but the Northeast

"The study found that “abortion deserts” exist in every region in the United States except the Northeast. The Midwest has the fewest abortion providers per capita. Six states have only one facility providing abortion care: Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia."

*****

Regime to Deny Funds to Facilities That Do Abortions or Abortion Referral

"There are no terrorist groups dedicated to killing cops, although many of Black Lives Matter’s detractors would have you believe that is exactly what the organization is all about. (It isn't.) There are no roving gangs of people looking to kill cops. But the delusion is bearing fruit. Two versions of a bill—a Senate and House version—were introduced in U.S. Congress this week that would designate violence against police as a hate crime. The so-called Protect and Serve Act would also deem police officers a protected class."

"Following a weeks-long campaign of economic blackmail waged by Amazon and other large corporations, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a watered-down version of the head tax on big business last Monday. The tax will fund housing construction and services for Seattle’s large and growing homeless population. The bill will cost the company just $10 million annually, which represents less than the amount Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes in an hour."

Comment: an earlier, now-obviously deceptive report by Truthout treated this as a huge victory -- a classic example of how the non-Marxist Left protects Capitalism by perpetuating the Big Lie of U.S. "democracy."

Last Words: "It's the End of the World and I Feel Terrible"

"I’ve written many hundreds of columns. The one below has caused me the most uncertainty about going public with it. I’m accustomed to writing about facts, quotes, documented history, while offering assessments. But this piece extrapolates from the current zeitgeist, going into realms of events that must be speculative and—until too late—unprovable."

The Mass Murder Essential to Capitalism Forces Us into Criminal Compliance

"The cost to human lives in our current cycle of U.S.-initiated 'perpetual wars' throughout the Middle East and Africa is unthinkably high. It runs well into millions of deaths if one counts – as do the Nuremberg principles of international law – victims of spinoff fighting and sectarian violence that erupt after we destroy governance structures. Also to be counted are other forms of human loss, suffering, illness and early mortality that result from national sanctions, destruction of physical, social and medical infrastructure, loss of homeland, refugee flight, ethnic cleansing, and their psychological after-effects. One has to witness these to grasp their extent in trauma, and they all arise from the Nuremberg-defined “supreme crime” of initiating...aggressive war."

Comment: in other words, we have been living in the de facto Fourth Reich long before the Trump/Pence Regime made it undeniably obvious. And in contemplating our futures we would therefore do very well to reflect on how the civilized world avenged the Third Reich's still-inadequately counted millions of victims. (The preceding link is to 4.33 minutes of historical film, documentary footage bolstered by intensely accurate dramatizations. All-documentary films on the taking of Berlin are here and here; the RT footage was complied in 2010, hence the outdated crawl.)

*****

Regime to Imprison Immigrant Children in Concentration Camps on Military Bases

See also:"The Trump administration has zealously altered the US immigration system in the last year and a half, seeking new ways to limit legal immigration, and new ways to punish unauthorized immigration. The administration’s gratuitous cruelty towards immigrants harms many thousands of children every year. Over five days, organizations across Washington state are going to force a sense of urgency on our members of Congress, and demand they prioritize work on these issues..." (With my thanks to M.P. for the link and my apology for the techno-fuckup that delayed its publication.)

Comment: obviously immigrant children are only the first demographic group doomed to the Empire's concentration camps. The equally obvious question is who amongst us will be next? Meanwhile a clenched-fist socialist salute to the Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center, the ecumenical Catholic organization that's courageously fighting the regime's ever-intensifying savagery. (Never fear, I remain as defiantly pro-choice as ever, but this is one struggle in which we should damn well set aside our aversion to patriarchal religion and join with those who are trying to put the revolutionary Jesus back into Christianity.)

"Gruesome as the latest Israeli atrocities are, with over 70 murdered and a couple thousand civilians deliberately shot by IDF snipers, it will not be the turning point in relations between the US empire and its Israeli client state. The brutal military campaigns against Gaza in 2009 and 2014 killed thousands, wounded tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands with a Democrat in the White House. Despite some DSA victories in western Pennsylvania, despite demurrals from Bernie Sanders and a handful of House members, and whatever qualms Democratic voters might have, Democratic party leaders are as always firmly behind their Israeli clients, and their party machinery remains under lock and key."

Comment: Flores' comments were both idiotically self-endangering and profoundly inappropriate. Nevertheless, the appropriateness of one's speech is not a police matter save in zero-tolerance dictatorships. Obviously our First Amendment is as dead as the rest of our Bill of Rights (except of course for the Second Amendment, which under the Trump/Pence Regime will no doubt eventually itself be perverted, exactly as its Weimar Republic counterpart was perverted by the German Nazis, to allow firearms ownership only by certified JesuNazis and fascists).

Comment: once again, too many of us on the Left have discredited ourselves by agitating false hopes -- often by deliberately disseminating disinformation about the significance of the Senate vote. Worse, these falsehoods and distortions give hope where in truth there is none, thereby encouraging our continued subjugation by the ever-more-deadly Big Lie of "American Democracy." As I have repeatedly argued, net neutrality is finished, period, and we have no alternative but to devise new paths -- including the resurrection of presumably obsolete technologies -- to get around the resultant obstructions. Meanwhile the energy we squandered in our deluded effort to save net neutrality would better have been focused on the increasingly limited options -- for example local organizing to feed homeless people or get food to homebound folks who have no transport to food banks -- allowed us by Capitalism and Capitalist-protecting JesuNazi tyranny. Quoth Sun Tzu: "where the enemy is strong, there avoid him." In other words, do not fight when you cannot possibly win.

See also:"'I am so moved by the strength and determination of our Idaho voters today. Their voices were heard loud and clear — our vision for a more prosperous future lies with the progressive values embodied by this campaign,” Jordan said in a telephone call to Indian Country Today. 'Our communities have spoken., and now we must unite as never before to move onward together...(I am) honored by the widespread support received from my relatives throughout Indian Country.'”

Comment: false hopes, anyone? An ever-increasing segment of the 99 Percent is recognizing the depressing truth that the Democratic (sic) Party and the Republican Party are nothing more than two factions within One Capitalist Party of Two Names (OCPOTN). Hence an increasing number of us, never forgetting the bitter lesson taught us by Barack Obama's maliciously premeditated betrayal of "change we can believe in," no longer bother to vote. Non-voters and never-again voters remember too that we the people are now effectively locked out of the electoral process; it's who counts the ballots [including The Supreme Court, as in George the Second's victory-by-judicial-theft in 2000], that determines the outcome of our elections. (Yes, I still vote, but only to protect the franchise; the total undoing of the New Deal [and particularly the murder of its last national advocate, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy], taught me long ago that Capitalism cannot ever be reformed and that -- subjugated as we are by our Capitalist masters -- our votes are generally meaningless. Indeed, had the Trump/Pence Regime not prematurely revealed the Empire's JesuNazi heart, some other regime, most likely with a Democratic [sic] Party label, would have done so within a very few years.)

*****

Seattle City Council Gives Amazon the Finger, Enacts Tax on Predatory Capitalists

"I'm done with Waffle House. I know many other people including Bernice King—CEO of The King Center and MLK Jr.'s daughter—who are sickened by the attacks against Black folks."

Comment: as an editor I must respectfully quibble with our allies at Color of Change on one point: it was not "internalized fear" that prompted the surrogate Klanswoman of the de facto Waffle House Klavern to call the cops; the notion of "internalized fear" provides her with a quasi-rational excuse, when in fact the white waitress's response is inexcusable. It was prompted by the murderous Ku Klux and/or JesuNazi hatred of people of color that increasingly defines white USians' political ideologies -- precisely the same sort of hatred that fueled the German Nazis' genocidal assaults against Slavs, Jews, Roma, homosexuals, disabled people and anyone else derFüehrer and his malevolent henchmen deemed "unworthy of life."

17 May 2018

This delay is due to technical problems I hope to have corrected as soon as possible, which means this week's edition will probably be up by Friday afternoon. My apology for any resultant inconvenience. Sunday morning's "Weekend Update" will most likely be back on schedule. Thank you for your patience.

12 May 2018

NORMALLY I ORDER the linked reports in Dispatches in accordance with news values that were mine as a daily newspaper news editor or telegraph editor. This is to say international news generally outranks all but the most significant local news, and crisis, scandal or disaster outranks everything else unless it is a positive story about some development (such as an increase in the minimum wage) that benefits us all. But those criteria vanish down the proverbial toilet in the face of the following story, which, though it is about the victimization of one man, nevertheless exemplifies the stark, Gestapo-type terror with which the JesuNazi Trump/Pence Regime threatens us all. Indeed it is a wake-up call of the most alarming sort -- precisely why I have chosen it to lead this edition of "Weekend Update":

Comment: obviously Mr. Balogun is but the first victim in the JesuNazi regime's Gestapo-inspired terrorizing of dissenters, in which context we dast not forget the words of Martin Niemöller, "first they came for the socialists..."

"Sen. Joe Donnelly on Saturday became the second Democrat to announce he will cast his vote in favor of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel -- boosting her prospects of being confirmed...West Virginia's Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat in a state that voted for Mr. Trump by the greatest margin, has also voiced his support for Haspel."

Comment: yes, it's a Mainstream Media story, but its weekend timing is guaranteed to obscure it, hence the above link to its text.

Comment: precisely as an LGBTQ advocate said in response to this newest example of the Trump/Pence Regime's JesuNazi sadism, "the administration is clearly prepared to encourage federal prisons to violate federal law and advance its own inhumane agenda."

"In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the support of rebel groups against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the support of a Saudi-led war of aggression in Yemen, the question on everyone’s mind at this time is a terrible one: has the United States now committed itself to violent regime change in Iran?Imperialism and militarism, now dominant as cultural values in the United States, will make another war seem attractive to many Americans...The U.S. is a country where nearly two-thirds of the population support torture against suspect terrorists, and where more than forty percent of Americans think it was the 'right decision' to invade Iraq in 2003–a war that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, produced millions of refugees, led to the rise of ISIS, and was done in blatant violation of international law."

And this:"I can tell you from firsthand experience, that I’ve seen this before. Our government is laying the groundwork for yet another war. Be on the lookout for several things. First, Trump is going to begin shouting about the “threat” from Iran. It will become a daily mantra. He’ll argue that Iran is actively hostile and poses an immediate danger to the United States."

See related petition, which -- despite the fact it will do no good -- we should nevertheless sign as an act of protest:"Trump ran on a promise to let Medicare negotiate aggressively, which would lower prices for everyone. Today, he’s abandoned that promise. Donald Trump’s cowardice in blocking Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices is more proof that he works for the drug industry not the people...Stand with Social Security Works and demand immediate action by Congress to address the national crisis of skyrocketing drug prices...Sign the petition today!" (With thanks to TigerLille1 for sending me the link.)

*****

Trump Going Full Fascist for Midterm Elections

"Donald Trump’s rally in Elkhart, Indiana Thursday night was the latest in a series of campaign-style events where he is testing out a political appeal of a fascistic character. It follows similar events over the past two months, all in the industrial Midwest: a rally in Moon Township in the Pittsburgh suburbs on March 10; a rally in Washington Township, Michigan, in the Macomb County suburbs of Detroit, on April 28; and a fundraising appearance in suburban Cleveland on May 5."

"State legislatures in both Kansas and Oklahoma passed bills last Thursday (Senate Bill 284 in Kansas and Senate Bill 1140 in Oklahoma) that would allow state-funded child-placing agencies to use religion to justify denying children homes and discriminating against prospective parents. Both bills would allow child-placing agencies to refuse to perform, assist or participate in any child placement in the name of religion. That means agencies that receive state funding could discriminate against prospective adoptive and foster parents because they are a same-sex couple, are interfaith, were previously divorced or are a different faith than the agency. Agencies would be able to ignore the best interest of the child – the bedrock standard for placing children."

*****

Trump/Pence Attorney General Gleefully Escalates His War on Poor People

"What’s the point of four years of rigorous studying, of amassing student loans, of backbreaking night and weekend jobs, if there are almost zero job prospects out there? And, worse, what is their money going toward if not the kind of quality education they have been promised? With most classes no longer being taught by professors but by graduate students or adjunct teachers, (students) find the US educational system to be a scam...(because) universities today follow profit-maximizing strategies...in labor management, that closely mirror those of private businesses."

"...at the bottom of the incel worldview: sex is a commodity, accumulation of this commodity enhances a man’s status, and every man has a right to accumulation, but women are in some mysterious way obstacles to this, and they are therefore the enemy as well as the commodity...(incel males) are furious at their own low status, but don’t question (how Capitalism) allocates status and commodifies us all in ways that are painful and dehumanizing."

Comment: patriarchy -- itself as much an incentive to murder as its economic offspring Capitalism -- expresses itself with the same sadistically deadly misogyny everywhere on our planet. Note again my not-entirely facetious observation that if there were such thing as space aliens, the introduction of patriarchy (via talking snakes, burning bushes and fiery wheels) would obviously be the interstellar equivalent of the smallpox-infected blankets employed by Europeans during the genocidal extermination of First Nations people.

And this: "...Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday let it be known once again that the Democratic Party risks another round of failure unless it embraces the kind of bold, progressive agenda that can unite the working class and upend the normalization of big-money politics and oligarchic rule that helped usher President Donald Trump into office."

*****

Film Review: the Apocalyptic Horrors of Capitalism

"As part of its special series celebrating the 200thbirthday of Karl Marx between May 18-22, the Anthology Film Archives will be screening Capitalism, a 320-minute, six-part documentary that is both supremely intelligent and briskly entertaining, on May 20th at 3:45. Directed by Ilan Ziv, the founder of Icarus Films, it is like no other film I have ever seen about the horror we face in our daily lives that is much more frightening than slasher movies like Halloween or Friday the Thirteenth. After all, the idea of nuclear holocaust or global warming—just two of the threats we face from an economic system gone mad—are not something a plucky hero or heroine in a John Carpenter movie can stave off."

*****

Last Words I: How Crosscut's Censorship Encourages Public School Illiteracy

"...when budget cuts left my (Seattle) school, The Center School, at risk of losing its art department...me and a few friends got together..." (emphasis added)

This was the first time in many years of occasional but often outspokenly Marxian comment-thread contributions the publication has attempted to silence me.

I say "attempted" because the censored text follows, defiantly reprinted exactly as I submitted it:

Why did a Crosscut copy editor fail to correct the glaringly illiterate grammatical error ("...me and a few friends got together...") in Christine Cornell's second graf? Was the editor who overlooked that obvious blunder merely asleep at the proverbial switch, or was there clandestine intent to undermine Ms. Cornell's heartfelt plea that we the people recapture the public schools from the Neoliberal foes of universal education?

Whichever, the sadly revealing magnitude of Ms. Cornell's mistake -- an inability to distinguish between nominative and objective forms of personal pronouns (a failure proper schooling would have remedied no later than fifth grade) -- is itself testimony to the depth of the abyss into which public education has been hurled by Neoliberal austerity policies.

Ms. Cornell is thus revealed -- no doubt to her own mortification -- as a victim of the very policies she protests. Worse, she is victimized in ways she herself has not yet learned to recognize. This is no fault of her own; it is a nationally ruinous failure for which we the people are ourselves most grievously at fault. And it matters not whether we are paralyzed by cowardice, ignorance and indifference or mobilized by Christian fanaticism and prosperity-gospel greed. All of those conditions facilitate and accelerate the methodical destruction of our once-envied system of free public education.

I therefore hope Ms. Cornell will soon realize the staggering cutbacks imposed on U.S. public-school funding are not socioeconomic or political coincidence; they are instead the expression of very specific Capitalist policies maliciously crafted to serve three particularly vicious Ayn Rand objectives. These are: (A)-relieving the Capitalists and their Ruling Class vassals of school taxes (thereby further increasing their already murderously obscene profits); (B)-imposing compulsory school privatization (thereby eliminating free education as a right and permanently reducing it to a weaponized privilege of wealth, precisely the irremediable perversion of purpose that already defines U.S. health care); and (C)-creating a methodically dumbed-down citizenry for whom access to genuinely effective education -- that is, education capable of lifting one out of the ever-expanding miasma of USian poverty, ignorance, alienation and disenfranchisement -- is to become the exclusive possession of no more than 10 percent of the population, i.e., our One Percent overlords and their wholly owned political, professional and managerial subordinates.

Sadly Ms. Cornell seems to have remained oblivious to the fact the elected officials to whom she appeals for redress -- Democratic (sic) and Republican alike -- are the very malefactors who are inflicting the wounds she so rightfully decries. Again this is not her fault; it is rather proof of how the USian propaganda apparatus far exceeds in its intellect-neutralizing effectiveness even the mind-crippling restraints demanded by the late Josef Goebbels.

Eventually though Ms. Cornell will no doubt learn that "American democracy" is amongst the very biggest of the Big Lies with which our species has habitually anesthetized itself. The bitter, statistically proven truth is that U.S. elected officials serve only the demands of their Capitalist masters -- which means they are hellbent on tyrannizing everyone else. Pleading with such moral imbeciles to re-fund public education is ultimately nothing more than wasted time and breath. Even when the Capitalists are frightened into humanitarian reforms, they will always subvert and repeal them as soon as they can.

The terrible truth is that Capitalism cannot ever be reformed. That's because the Capitalists' sole purpose is the maximization and fulfillment of their own greed -- precisely the lesson repeatedly taught us by the notably bipartisan destruction of the New Deal, which at its height made life in this country -- especially for white people -- indescribably less wretched than it is today.

Thus in these times because of the near-total authority by which the Capitalists and their vassals command the economic and political systems, an advocate's time is better spent organizing economy-crippling strikes and massive protests in the streets. Yes, our overlords in their frenzied tantrums of frustrated greed will then undoubtedly unleash their militarized police to respond with the same maximum murderousness they already routinely employ against non-white minorities. But once that happens -- as it did for example at Kent State University and Jackson State College in 1970 -- our overlords will have (again) revealed the ultimate, no-holds-barred evil of their bottomless avarice and its mandate for self-protective brutality.

And perhaps, with the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin now achieving what may well be an all-time U.S. popularity amongst younger readers, the deadly lessons of Kent and Jackson will not be so fearfully and hastily discarded. At least Ms. Cornell and her fellow victims may come to recognize what is being done to them and why it is being done. Its purpose is to hasten Capitalism's (inevitable) metamorphosis into a uniquely modern form of fascism, in reality -- for all of us save its plutocratic beneficiaries -- a death-dealing combination of credit-card serfdom, for-profit prison slavery, police-state terrorism, potentially apocalyptic warmongering and inevitably apocalyptic, definitively misogynistic hatred and contempt for our Mother Earth.

That said, and despite being educationally deprived, Ms. Cornell demonstrates commendable courage, passion and skill at advocacy. But if she is to further empower her ability to speak for herself and her peers, she should take a remedial course in English grammar (which in any case she will most assuredly need for college-level work).

Far more usefully -- because the education curtailments she fights are manifestations of class war (i.e.. the Rich "trickling down" on all the rest of us) -- she should familiarize herself with Marxism, starting of course with The Communist Manifesto and its bold, eternally correct assertion that all of us who are not part of the One Percent and its vassalage "have nothing to lose but (our) chains."

Ms. Cornell might even find an inspiring role-model or two in the uniquely pivotal role of women in the Russian revolutions of 1917 and again in the unprecedented courageousness of the Soviet victory over Nazism c.1941-1945.

In any case I wish the very best to Christine Cornell, to her colleagues and to the cause they represent -- a cause we the people must again make our own if we are ever to experience the powerful collective and individual rewards of the liberties pledged us by our now-nearly nullified Bill of Rights.

"...the memorial would be dedicated to the spirit, bravery and sacrifice of Native American soldiers across United States history, and would serve as a place of solace and communion for Native American veterans and their loved ones. Now, the submission period has closed, and (the National Museum of the American Indian) has winnowed the pool of designs down to five possibilities." With thanks to TigerLille1 for sending me the link to one of this weekend's very few positive stories.

Plus this:"...there are striking and instructive parallels between imperialist diplomacy in the 1930s and today. In the run-up to World War II, all sorts of diplomatic agreements were signed, only to be shredded soon after, with the Nazi regime leading the wolf pack.

Comment: the poll results are irrelevant to the One Percent and its Ruling Class vassalage and thus would be ignored even if support for the Iran accord were 100 percent. But when O when will we finally awaken to the fact our alleged "democracy" is but a Big Lie?

*****

Empire Ignores World War II History -- Especially the Battle of Sevastopol

"Western leaders and Ukraine’s current pro-Western government...entertained ideas of a NATO base in Sevastopol, right on the border with Russia, offering NATO ships almost unlimited control over the region and also an opportunity to neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet...a similar dream once held by Nazi Germany."

“According to a recent poll, 88 percent of the South Korean public viewed the recent peace summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in as a success. In addition, 65 percent of South Koreans trust Kim Jong-un on his pledge to denuclearize, and Moon Jae-in’s approval ratings have shot up to 86 percent. Broadly speaking, recent developments between North and South Korea have been met with widespread optimism and praise from the South Korean public. Reading US media, one would hardly know any of this.”

See also: "... media in the U.S...ignore... U.S. interventionism in Latin America...unless it’s really a smoking gun, where they’re caught red-handed in a way that nobody could deny.”

See also: "Putting Haspel in charge of the CIA would undo attempts by the agency — and the nation — to repudiate torture. The message this would send to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and you’ll get promoted. Don’t worry about the law. Don’t worry about ethics. Don’t worry about morality or the fact that torture doesn’t even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. We’ll cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too."

Comment: on every level, these hearings exemplify our fake "democracy" in action, its Big Lie phoniness intensified by the fact Haspel will be confirmed as chief torturer no matter the objections to her appointment.

*****

The Trump/Pence Regime as a (JesuNazi) Death Cult

"...we now have a president whose administration considers it perfectly normal...to separate parents from even tiny children crossing our southern border or to cut food aid and raise the rent on poor Americans. We're talking about a president with a cult-like following whose government is ideologically committed to wiping out environmental protections of every sort and pushing the further fossil fuelization of the country and the planet, even if it means the long-term destruction of the very environment that has nurtured humanity these last thousands of years. Think of this perhaps as a new kind of death cult...As with all such things, this particular cult did not come from nowhere, but from a land of growing extremity, a country that now, it seems, may be willing to preside over not just cities in ruin but a planet in ruin, too."

And this: "Few Christians will admit it...but they are members of a Death Cult; a degenerate, death-anxious, exclusively fatalistic religion that... produced a continuous supply of socially derelict luminaries who’ve longed for nothing short of the total and complete annihilation of our home world...Christianity (like Judaism and Islam) is an anticipatory religion; a sect almost wholly fixated on the expectations...all but 'saved' Christians (perhaps as few as 144,000) will be butchered by the Middle Eastern Christian god…a bloodbath many Christian captains have been (and still are today) simply giddy about."

And especially this: "The Evangelicals’ Jesus is satanic, and those who hustle (for) this demon are 'false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.'"

Comment: in essence, the ever-more-brazenly apocalyptic JesuNazi Trump/Pence Regime is killing the First Amendment (and thereby imposing theocracy) by redefining "religious freedom" as the right of Christians to persecute non-believers and relentlessly suppress so-called "heretical" science or humanitarian criticism. Thus the ever-intensifying Christian war against knowledge and humanitarianism -- aided and abetted by the compliant silence of white Christians in general -- has grown into a major, increasingly triumphant offensive in the Abrahamic religions' war against all planetary life. Thus too, were there truly such things as space aliens, their seeding of Earth's peoples with the germs of patriarchy via talking snakes, burning bushes and fiery wheels would unquestionably be the intergalactic equivalent of the smallpox-infested blankets used with such devastating results at the height of the European genocide against First Nations peoples.

*****

Border Guards Now Target Anyone Who Dares Help Undocumented Immigrants

"...Scott Warren was arrested by Border Patrol agents...The 35-year-old college instructor, with a doctorate in geography and a history of academic and humanitarian work along the border, was found... in the company of two young undocumented men from Mexico. Accused of supplying the men with food, water, clothing, and a place to sleep, he was indicted by a grand jury in February, on two counts of harboring undocumented immigrants and one count of conspiracy to transport and harbor undocumented immigrants...(and) could spend up to two decades in prison if convicted and sentenced to consecutive terms."

Comment: given the compliant submissiveness of the white USian 99 Percent plus the increasingly obvious JesuNazi savagery of the Trump/Pence Regime, protests against anti-immigrant outrages should continue despite the probability they will only intensify the oppression. Wake up, people: we are now being shown the true extent to which "American Democracy" is -- and always has been -- amongst the biggest Big Lies with which we USians, like the German Nazis before us, have sedated ourselves. Indeed the sole reason the Democratic (sic) Party pretends to despise its Republican Party partner is that the latter has prematurely revealed the infinite murderousness of Capitalism -- the very quality the Democrats had hoped to keep hidden until the militarized local police and the federal law enforcement, intelligence and secret police agencies were fully organized into a new Gestapo. I say again: WAKE THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE, though it's probably already too late. For additional proof of what is being done to us, see also the following stories on the Empire's many deceptive variants of genocide.

*****

Trump/Pence Regime Scheming "Paper Genocide" to Wipe Out First Nations

"...the Trump administration now appears to be...committing a 'paper genocide'...(by claiming) Native America is a 'race' and not a diverse sum of distinct cultures and subcultures of sovereign Nations, tribes, and Peoples."

"A social worker, Lisel Vargas, has come to visit Don Gregorio...a 62-year-old former carpenter who...stopped taking his medication for depression more than a week ago, and he says he hasn't slept in four days...His voice monotone and barely audible, he tells Vargas that he has recently had thoughts of suicide. Indeed, the overall suicide rate in Puerto Rico increased 29 percent in 2017..."

Comment: as the genocide-minded USian One Percent and its Ruling Class vassalage discovered decades ago, the scandal of death camps is easily avoided by deft manipulation of public policy to deny us the government services we need to survive. Thus from the infinitely Evil perspective of our Capitalist-turned-JesuNazi overlords, suicide occasioned by austerity is the most successful genocide of all. Not only does it avoid the death-camp stigma; it is the one form of death in which -- especially now under the JesuNazi doctrines of the Trump/Pence Regime -- the dead victim is forever slandered by 100 percent of the blame.

Comment: for obvious reasons, I do not normally link to Mainstream Media reports. But on this story, the only other report was a typical mass of lies and deceptions by Daily Kos, the Democratic (sic) Party apparatus that vindictively applauded Hillary Clinton's theft of the 2016 presidential nomination from Bernie Sanders and -- like the party in general -- thus helped ram Trump/Pence JesuNazism down our collective throats. Moreover the Daily Kos report tries to blame the office closures on the Republicans, when in fact the Obama Regime was the primary malefactor. By contrast, The Washington Post -- while it follows the Mainstream Media policy of forever avoiding any admission of austerity's genocidal purpose -- nevertheless in this instance does an adequate job of covering the story.

Comment: yet another example of how we're repeatedly betrayed by the Democrats.

*****

Fossil Fuel Fascists Now Hiring Actors to Support Ecocidal Atrocities

"Some of the concerned citizens who turned up at city council meetings in New Orleans to support a (much contested) power plant were in fact paid actors..."

*****

Appalachian Tree-Sitters Ousted by Threats from Federal Judge

After more than a month sitting in trees protesting the Mountain Valley pipeline, Theresa “Red” Terry and her daughter, Minor, finally came down...a day after a federal judge...order(ed) them to come down.

As Empire and Puppets Embrace Fascism, Marx Is More Relevant Than Ever

"The 20th century political movements that attempted to make Karl Marx’s ideas reality may have failed but, 200 years since the philosopher’s birth on May 5, 1818, his analysis and foresights have repeatedly proven true. We are, in many ways, living in the world Marx predicted."

*****

Support Urged for Poor People's Campaign Despite Its Pro-Capitalist Taint

Last Words: 7 Russian Songs Commemorate Red Army Victory in World War II

"It is hard to convey to Western readers how emotionally powerful Victory Day is in Russia. It celebrates the central national narrative of the Russian State, and is by far the most popular secular holiday of the year. The only one to match it in importance is Easter, the main religious holiday... In the run-up to Saturday, The Moscow Timeshas compiled a list of the most popular military songs."

06 May 2018

"Carbon dioxide measurements at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii averaged 410.31 parts per million (ppm) in April. That bests last May’s record of 409.65 ppm, is well above the pre-industrial value of 280 ppm, and means the atmosphere of April 2018 was unparalleled in human history. Its reign will be short-lived, as May will almost surely set another record."

Iowa Governor Gleefully Inks Law to Forever End All U.S. Abortion Rights

“Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed the country’s most restrictive abortion bill into law Friday, outlawing the procedure once a 'heartbeat' is detected, which is usually at about six weeks — a time when many people do not yet know they are pregnant...Reynolds, who has in the past referred to abortion as 'murder,' echoed that sentiment in a statement Friday. 'I understand and anticipate that this will likely be challenged in court, and that courts may even put a hold on the law until it reaches the Supreme Court,' (she said). This is bigger than just a law. This is about life.'”

Comment: we all know the intent of the Trump/Pence Regime is to pack the Supreme Court with misogynistic, homophobic, racist JesuNazis; we likewise know that only a deity-class miracle will prevent judicial aging from giving Trump at least one more vacancy to full -- all he needs to turn the court into precisely the rubber-stamp for theocracy he and his collaborators intend it to be. But maybe after the Trumped Court upholds this murderously misogynistic law, as we know with near 100-percent-certainity it will do, the nation's women finally will throw away their pussy hats -- which sugar-coat dead serious issues with pink polyester silliness (and in tactical truth do nothing more than give the cops and secret police aiming points for their cameras and guns) -- and at long last recognize the only way to defeat the JesuNazis is to get Petrograd-serious about the hard and deadly dangerous work of revolution. The only question -- should that blessed event obtain -- is whether we men of the USian Empire will have the brass balls demonstrated by the men of the Putilov Machine Works and, just as they did when they joined the women of the Lesnoy Textile Works on International Women's Day of 1917, follow our breathtakingly courageous sisters into battle.

*****

2018 Farm Bill Threatens Genocidal Food Stamp Cuts

"There is a lot at stake in the 2018 Farm Bill negotiations. The largest proposed cuts would be to the SNAP program, formerly known as 'food stamps.' Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, argues that these cuts would 'increase hunger, foster poorer nutrition, and further increase health inequity in our nation,' while Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, calls them 'deeply concerning because they potentially cut millions of Americans out of these benefits, putting their health in jeopardy. The staff of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, cautions that the bill’s proposed 'sweeping, aggressive new work requirements' for SNAP recipients 'would likely prove unworkable and do substantially more harm than good, fueling increases in hunger and poverty.'"

Comment: this is conflict in which the Democrats lose the 2018 election by revealing their true Neoliberal (aka Republican aka JesuNazi) colors and supporting the Trump/Pence Regime's savagery.

*****

Trump/Pence Regime Continues Iran Warmongering

"The Iran nuclear deal is on the verge of sinking on May 12, when Donald Trump will decide whether or not to waive the nuclear-related sanctions, as the deal calls for. While the world is cheering the upcoming meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (including Trump’s fans calling for a Nobel Peace Prize), Trump is needlessly and recklessly driving our nation down a path toward war with Iran—and neither Congress nor the American people seem to care."

*****

Teachers' Unions Betray Members, Join Neoliberal War on Public Education

"Schools reopened across Arizona on Friday, as teachers returned to work following the betrayal of their courageous week-long strike by the unions, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the nominally “independent” union front group, Arizona Educators United.The deal is virtually identical to the proposal of Republican governor Doug Ducey that teachers rejected before the strike began, and meets none of the main demands of teachers or support staff.The unions’ sellout is the latest in a series of betrayals..."

"The Trump administration announced (Friday) that it is ending temporary protected status (TPS) for 86,000 Hondurans who have lived in the United States for nearly 20 years. To date, the Trump administration has terminated TPS status for 425,000 immigrants, which will lead to a mass deportation roughly equal to the population of Minneapolis, Cleveland or Oakland.Protections for these immigrants will now expire in 2020, at which point those in the U.S. under TPS will be forced to return to their war-torn, impoverished home country."

See also: "More than 50,000 people will be 'condemned to misery,' according to one immigrant rights advocate, following the Trump administration's decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Hondurans who arrived in the US after fleeing their hurricane-ravaged country in 1999."

And this:"if the material conditions of life continue to revive interest in Marx’s ideas about capitalism, then surely his notions about a socialist future and his concept of the working class political party needed to get there will also have a second coming."

*****

Film Review: "While There Is a Soul in Prison, I Am Not Free”

"...filmmaker Yale Strom’s new documentary, American Socialist: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs... tells the story of the pioneering union leader and founding member of International Workers of the World (IWW)...Debs co-founded the American Railway Union (ARU), which galvanized a wildcat strike over pay cuts into a nationwide Pullman Strike that landed him six months in prison...he was the founding member of the Socialist Party of America and ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. The first political figure jailed for anti-war speech, Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for urging people to resist the military draft of World War I. He told the court: 'Your Honor, years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.'"With thanks to TigerLille1 for sending me the link.

Comment: too bad our various official and unofficial mechanisms of censorship will not allow this film to be viewed beyond the preaching-to-the-choir audiences in New York City and Los Angeles.

04 May 2018

UNDER ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, I would ignore the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. But the outcry for and against Michelle Wolf's precedent-setting denunciations of the Trump/Pence Regime and its enablers in the Democratic (sic) Party and in the Mainstream Media propaganda machine have catapulted the event into a major news item.

Why do I see it as such? Because -- those who know me as a perpetual pessimist please accept my apology for this forthcoming spasm of optimism -- I believe Wolf's rightfully venomous characterizations of our JesuNazi overlords and their nauseatingly obsequious enablers could mark the beginning of a genuine transformation in our domestic political discourse.

The Mainstream Media will of course continue to serve its One Percent masters by strumpeting lies and disinformation on command -- that is, after all, the sole function of this uniquely USian, privately owned, for-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

But thanks to Wolf 's epic bravery -- and depending too on the severity of the inevitable retaliation the One Percent and its vassals inflict upon her in the days, weeks and months to come -- we the people may now be notably less reluctant to publicly acknowledge the apocalyptic monster the U.S. has become. Those who have hitherto been silenced by fear may, now encouraged by Wolf's example, begin to speak up for themselves. And the resultant outpouring of pent-up anti-Capitalist rage and anguish could indeed grow into a revolutionary variant of #MeToo -- unless the Ruling Class radically accelerates its plans to effectively shut down social media for any communication more profound than mutual masturbation.

Meanwhile, just as the Trump-Pence Regime repeatedly reveals, the rulers of today's United States yearn for nothing so much as to become the Führers of a Fourth Reich. They are determined to conquer and subjugate all the peoples of the world and to exterminate any of us who might dare resist.

Nor should we forget that same malevolent ambition is shared by both the Republican and Democratic (sic) factions of the One Capitalist Party Of Two Names (OCPOTN). Thus, cloaked by Big Lies and deceptive euphemisms, it predates Trump/Pence by at least six decades.

Indeed this is the most terrible secret Trump has shamelessly revealed to the world -- that Hillary's sadistically triumphant cackle is in fact the Empire's national anthem. And that revelation -- the Trump/Pence normalization of the white-majority JesuNazism the Democrats had hoped to keep hidden at least until Hillary fulfilled her obscene fantasy of conquering Russia -- is no doubt the main reason the Democrats so relentlessly despise Trump himself.

That said, what follows are my links to reports on Michelle Wolf's performance as I had organized them before I realized their potentially pivotal significance and elevated them to this week's lead story:

After Wolf's Biting Performance, Trumps Wants No More Press Dinners

"On Saturday, comedian Michelle Wolf did the unpardonable: she told the truth. As the entertainer for the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner—typically the occasion for backslapping and self-congratulation by an incestuous and corrupt press—she delivered a ferocious, entirely well-deserved and hilarious lampoon of the Trump administration, the Democrats and the press."

See also: "The consensus among media pros seems to be that Wolf went too far with a routine that began, "Like a porn star says when she's about to have sex with a Trump, let's get this over with."

And this: "President Donald Trump has heaped more criticism on comedian Michelle Wolf for her...performance at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, calling her 'filthy' and suggesting the annual event be canceled...In her scathing, 20-minute address (full video here), Wolf ripped into the Trump administration and took particular aim at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She also threw barbs at Ivanka Trump, 'as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons,' and Kellyanne Conway, 'the perfect last name for what she does.'"

Plus this: "As Michelle Wolf was leaving the podium at the end of her courageous and funny takedown of Trump, the Democrats and the press at the White House correspondents’ dinner last Saturday, she added, '…and Flint still doesn’t have clean water.' This is a statement with which a large majority of the city’s 100,000 residents would agree."

Comment: "Most consequential" indeed. Don't believe I've ever published this many links to variants on a single story, but I did so because every one of them is worth reading. And for Wolf's astounding bravery in speaking bitter truth to morally imbecilic power, she most assuredly deserves our "Hero of the 99 Percent" medal, an award that -- unfortunately -- does not presently exist and therefore must wait until after the revolution. Meanwhile Goddess grant Michelle Wolf absolute protection from Ruling Class retaliation, whether from the malicious snits of palace scribes, the sadistic malevolence of Hillary the Ever Vengeful and her Democratic (sic) Party, or the Apocalyptic Tantrums of the Evil Emperor himself.

*****

Huge U.S. War Fleet Now in Mediterranean to Threaten Russia

"The U.S. aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, which set sail from the world’s largest naval base in Norfolk (Virginia), entered the Mediterranean with its strike group. The strike group consists of the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and the guided-missile destroyers USS Farragut, USS Forrest Sherman, USS Bulkeley, and USS Arleigh Burke. Two others, USS Jason Dunham and USS The Sullivans, will rejoin the strike group at a later date. German destroyer FGS Hessen is added to the Truman strike group. The fleet, with more than 8,000 men on board, has an enormous firepower. The Truman – a supercarrier 300 meters long, equipped with two nuclear reactors – can launch 90 fighters and helicopters in consecutive waves. Its strike group, supplemented by four destroyers already in the Mediterranean and some submarines, can launch over 1,000 cruise missiles."

Comment: I frankly don't give a goddamn if Hedges is an ideologically incorrect democratic socialist; he remains one of the world's very best reporters on how U.S. "exceptionalism" -- the JesuNazi combination of white supremacy, Capitalism and Christianity -- victimizes all of us.

*****

As FDR Did to Jews, So Trump Now Does to Latin Americans

"Under direct orders from President Donald Trump, US immigration officials have refused to accept the asylum applications of nearly 200 immigrants escaping violence, war and poverty in Central America... the US is acting in flagrant violation of international law...US imperialism has transformed (Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala) to social disaster zones."

Comment: In the first link we see the Trump/Pence Regime's remarkably Nazi-like policy of punishing the adults by torturing the children, in this instance with all the documented horrors of U.S. foster care, which include institutional rape, savage physical and emotional abuse and hateful and/or exploitative surrogate parents. In the second link, we see vividly demonstrated the hateful indifference of the Obama and Trump/Pence regimes to our Constitutional rights.

"U.S. Government scientists have detected a weedkiller linked to cancer in an array of commonly consumed foods, emails obtained through a freedom of information request show. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been testing food samples for residues of glyphosate, the active ingredient in hundreds of widely used herbicide products, for two years, but has not yet released any official results.But the internal documents obtained by The Guardian show the FDA has had trouble finding any food that does not carry traces of the pesticide."

"Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein...has refused to (obey the Senate Intelligence Committee's demand) that that the Green Party hand over 'all communications with Russian media organizations, their employees, or associates, from February 6, 2015.' The committee also insisted it turn over 'all communications related to the campaign’s policy discussions related to Russia' and 'all communications with Russian persons.' These requests provide one of the most revealing examples to date of the government’s exploitation of Russia hysteria to suppress independent politics and alternative media in the US."

*****

Democratic (sic) Party Intensifies Its Campaign against Progressives

"A majority of Democratic voters, led by black, brown, and female Democrats, told pollsters in a recent study that they supported 'movements within the Democratic Party to take it even further to the left and oppose the current Democratic leaders'...And yet, as if determined to block their own party’s progress, House Democratic operatives have been attacking progressive candidates in public and working to undermine them in private."

Comment: note this new, unapologetically dictatorial presidential power was first claimed by Obama, who hid his astounding malice behind the Democratic (sic) Party's identity politics and so became history's most tyranny-enabling U.S. president.

“Project Blitz...(is) a concerted effort by the Christian Right to bombard state legislatures across the country with model legislation related to, among other things, attacking the LGBTQ community and codifying its stilted version of religious freedom...And the authors make their dominionist intent quite clear: to define public policies of the state in favor of biblical values concerning marriage and sexuality"

Comment: the deaths the Red Army inflicted in its pivotal fight against the Axis shows who truly fought and won the European half of World War II and to whom we are all indebted for saving us from the Hitler-era Nazis. So perhaps now in this dark time of Nazi reanimation we should ask if a closeted desire to inflict vengeance for all these dead Nazis is the real reason the cackling Goldwater Girl Hillary yearns to become the first-ever conqueror of Russia. I raise this question for two reasons. One, because the insanely apocalyptic magnitude of Hillary's hatred of Russia seems to warrant no other explanation; and two, because each of the approximately one dozen Goldwater Girls I have had the misfortune to encounter was smitten with admiration for Nazi Germany and atremble with lust for the "real men" (e.g. Heydrich, Himmler, Goebbels, Hitler himself etc. ad nauseam) who ruled the Third Reich. Is that the source of Hillary's hatred for all things Russian? Hint: ask yourself that question while picturing Hillary giving the Hitler Salute...

***

History II: The Deadly Cost of Russia's Recapture by Capitalism

"...contrary to the claims of capitalist triumphalists and most bourgeois academics, the restoration of capitalism (in Russia) was anything but 'peaceful'. It was a one-sided class war in which the working class, disarmed and beheaded by decades of Stalinism and the intervention of Pabloism, was bitterly attacked by both the rising oligarchy and imperialism. The death toll of this counterrevolution has never been drawn up. But any serious estimate would have to take into account not only the tens of thousands who died in the civil wars which erupted in the Caucasus and Central Asia; but also the over one million suicides in Russia alone since 1991; the horrific spike in deaths from previously eradicated diseases like tuberculosis; the millions of victims of the ongoing heroin and HIV epidemic; the tens of thousands of workers who have died in workplace accidents; and the many millions of victims of the decrepit state of the social infrastructure and the health care system..."

Comment: true Capitalism in truly murderous action.

*****

Thousands in Spain Protest Lesser Verdict in Rape Case

"In July 2016, an 18-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped in Spain during the Running of the Bulls festival. The woman told police that five men in their mid-20s took turns raping her after offering to walk her to her car. The subsequent trial of these five men has become known as the Wolf-Pack Trial, referring to the name of a WhatsApp chat group the alleged perpetrators were in together. On Thursday, a judge found the men guilty of sexual abuse but not of rape. Thousands in Spain have since taken to the street, protesting the (convictions) as too lenient."

*****

Why We Should Salute Ashley Judd for Suing Weinstein's Balls Off

"...Ashley Judd sued disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein for his grotesque behavior toward her more than two decades ago. Although Judd’s expertly crafted suit centers around Weinstein’s alleged efforts to assault her in a hotel room, it is not exclusively about his purported sexual misconduct. Instead, the complaint...deftly weaves that episode into a compelling theory of economic wrongdoing, accusing Weinstein of attempting to harm her career after she evaded his sexual predation. Plenty of women have been professionally disadvantaged by sexist, exploitative men. But far too few are able to sue in court given the difficulty of producing clear and convincing evidence. Luckily for Judd, she has witnesses to Weinstein’s reported wrongdoing. And her extremely plausible accusations could cost her alleged tormentor millions in damages."

Plus this: "Christianity turned so anti-Jesus, it was the equivalent of the American Tea Party, applauding wealth and even greed, Ayn-Rand style...American Fundamentalist Christians say don’t share a penny. King Jesus is going to make you rich. Don’t tax millionaires. Jesus may help me win the lottery. Tax poor people whom the Lord has left behind – no doubt for their sins. There’s nothing about the Jubilee Year here...”

Comment: As a Goddess-mindful Pagan agnostic, I am most emphatically not an apologist for Christianity, which is by far the most murderous theology in our species' history. But what is linked here is nevertheless thought-provoking reading. The texts focus on a (presumably) forthcoming book by Michael Hudson, Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Forfeiture and Redemption, From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year. In it, Hudson's formidable scholarship redefines the ultimately deadly conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees as economic warfare and provides new research on the economic clash underlying the great schism between Roman and Byzantine Christianity. His work identifies, as never before, the purely economic considerations that forever changed Western Christianity from a protest movement into an apocalyptic death cult. (The book was supposed to have been available via Amazon "this spring." But its continued absence from Amazon cataloging indicates its publication has been mysteriously delayed, perhaps by an act of the Capitalists in service to their infinitely sadistic god.)

29 April 2018

THE HEADLINES ABOVE and the related text immediately below combine two very different reports as if they were separate aspects of the same story -- which in oft-unacknowledged fact they truly are, intertwined like Yin and Yang.

One report -- "a new era of peace has begun" -- applauds the inspiring progress the Koreans are making toward establishing lasting peace on their peninsula. The key to their success seems to be recognition by both Kim Jong-Un and Moon Jae-in of the extent to which the Empire and its plutocratic owners profit by keeping the ancient nation divided. The two Koreas -- culturally one nation -- are thus quietly but fiercely fighting for the independence they need to extricate themselves from the JesuNazi race to apocalypse. Thus too the apparent success-by-negotiation of the two Korean heads of state bids fair to be the most hopeful omen for human survival since the Trump/Pence Regime took office.

But the dramatic breakthrough Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un have seemingly accomplished on the Korean Peninsula -- a feat that only a few days ago we were being told was impossible but is nevertheless relentlessly demanded not just by Koreans but by all mindful peoples of the world -- gives us a little taste of what we might do if we truly put our minds and bodies to it. Yes, it's still too soon to jump and cheer, but most inside sources say the positive signs are undeniable. The question of course is whether the Empire -- which depends on its South Korean presence to perpetuate a big chunk of profit for its military-industrial vassals -- will crush detente as it has so many times in the past.

Frankly I think what happened at Panmunjom on Friday is the most promising, hope-inspiring omen we've seen here on this tragically afflicted planet since 9/11 gave the Empire its long-sought rationale for flooring the accelerator on its 84-year drive toward global fascism.

"On the eighth anniversary of the BP oil spill, Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré stood in front of the New Orleans Federal Court House and called 'bullshit' on the court's handling of claims made by those who participated in the cleanup efforts. Thousands of workers BP hired to clean up the spill that polluted the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 have claimed exposure to oil and the dispersant has made them sick and still have not had their day in court. 'It's a crying damn shame we've allowed this in America,' Honoré said...We were poised to start World War lll over what the Syrians did to their own people, but here, we still haven't held BP accountable."Comment: given the malevolence of Capitalism, I doubt these unfortunate workers ever will be granted justice.

*****

New Study Shows Black Poverty Is Due to Economic Racism

"(New research from)...William Darity of Duke University, Darrick Hamilton of the New School, and a team of researchers seeks to... establish that the racial wealth gap was not produced by supposed black pathology and cannot be closed by individual effort."

*****

British Rejection of Black Immigrants Has Long Racist History

"On June 22, 1948 the ship HMT Empire Windrush arrived in the United Kingdom with 492 people from colonies in the Caribbean. The passengers were British subjects and thus had the right to emigrate. They had in fact been invited to live in the United Kingdom, recruited in the years of the post war labor shortage. They were the first arrivals of those who came to be known as the Windrush generation. They and their children had the right to live and work in Britain. But laws are always malleable when black people depend upon white power structures to protect their human rights..."

*****

Israel Steps Up Efforts to Provoke War with Iran

With the world media focused on the discussions in Washington between US President Donald Trump and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron concerning the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Israeli government has adopted an increasingly provocative posture toward Iran while carrying out a buildup on its northern border in preparation for a military confrontation.

*****

Empire Intensifies Planning to Overthrow Elected Venezuelan Government

"It was only a matter of time before the U.S. government and its compliant media would once again put Nicaragua in their sights. And, that time has indeed come. Comment: remember, Mouskeeters, when we subvert a foreign government and have its ousted leader tortured to death or put a Nazi regime in power, it's always to spread "democracy." It's only when somebody else tries to do it to us -- we exceptionals (i.e., god-anointed white successors to the German Nazi master race) -- that such assaults become provocations for thermonuclear war.

*****

Wisconsin Oil Refinery Blast Forces Evacuation of Thousands

"The Husky Energy refinery in the city of Superior (Wisconsin) was in the process of stopping operations for repairs on Thursday when a tank exploded, leading to a fire and huge plumes of smoke. After the initial blaze was put out, another punctured tank went up in flames. More than a dozen people were injured. A state of emergency and a mandatory evacuation order were lifted Friday morning. Officials are still investigating what led to the explosions."

"Have you heard what happened to Chikesia Clemons last weekend? Violence against Black women often doesn't get the coverage it deserves, so it's especially important that everyone sees this story. Clemons was eating with friends at a restaurant...When told they would be charged extra for disposable silverware to go with their leftovers, they requested to talk to a manager...(but) the restaurant called the police...(who) violently threw Clemons to the ground, exposing her breasts and threatening to break her arm...but one of Clemons' friends got the whole thing on video and it's gone viral."Comment: another racist atrocity by our federally militarized, Israeli-Army-trained local police, and in determinedly courageous response, another relevant, timely and uniquely effective petition from UltraViolet.Please sign. Remember every such signature also says "thank you for watching our backs and truly paying attention."

27 April 2018

A COUPLE OF READERS have asked me why I didn't link to last Friday's breaking news of the brazenly deceptive lawsuit the Democratic (sic) Party filed in federal court against Hillary Clinton's long list of selected scapegoats -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, WikiLeaks itself, the Russian government and of course the Trump campaign.

Rather than dodge such questions, I welcome them as potentially corrective feedback; they often tell me what I need to do improve Dispatches' usefulness to readers. In this instance the questions tell me I have not adequately explained Dispatches' form, content and purpose -- an oversight for which I apologize and -- hopefully -- will remedy in the next few paragraphs.

I did not overlook the lawsuit story or -- Goddess forbid -- choose to ignore it. The suit itself is merely the newest reiteration of the Democrats' endlessly repeated Big Lie that a criminal conspiracy by Assange, Russian intelligence operatives and Trump/Pence campaign officials stole the 2016 election from Hillary. The reeking taint of its Big Lie is half the reason Dispatches' "Weekend Update" of 20-21 April did not link to the original stories. The other half of the reason is the extensive, favorable and typically misleading coverage the lawsuit was granted by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine. Why sully Dispatches by linking to the sort of disinformation it seeks to neutralize or transcend? The story was already widely reported, and at that point in the news cycle I could add nothing to the coverage save perhaps a cynical sneer.

Thus -- as I usually do in such circumstances -- I decided I would await further developments. Decades ago the evolution of broadcast media, and more recently the advent of the Internet and social media, relieved print journalism of the scoop-the-world mandate that had ruled during most of my newspaper, wire service and magazine years. By necessity, print journalists these days focus far less on the rudiments of what happened -- that's now the job of the broadcasters -- and far more on the intricacies of what it means and what it might portend. It is an approach that in the newsrooms of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was known as a "second-day angle," and it was the reportorial lifeblood of all the better afternoon papers.

(Note too it is the greed-motivated refusal of the news monopolies to adopt this approach that has put U.S. daily newspapers on the endangered species list. Reliably ferreting out and communicating second-day angles demands of its writers and editors far more than the sorely limited perspective provided by a journalism degree. It is therefore considerably more expensive to produce than the traditional who-what-when-where-and-why brand of reporting. But why should you buy a paper if it merely rehashes what you already saw on your TV or cellphone?)

If proven, the lawsuit's assertions would substantiate the portrayal of Hillary as a feminist martyr. But even as formal though unproven allegations, they turn the Trump presidency into to her springboard. They enable her to offer herself as the reanimated savior come back to lift the nation out of its Trumpian convulsions of cruelty, conflict, chaos and corruption "without ever" -- this next whispered in an aside to her owners -- "damaging so much as the one strand of proverbial hair from any One Percenter's head."

If Hillary makes it onto the 2020 ballot, the notoriously short-memoried gullibility of the U.S. electorate will interact with widespread post-Trumpian loathing of anything Republican to enable her to at last fulfill her all-consuming ambition to be not only the first female president of the United States and ruler of its global empire, but also the first-ever conqueror of Russia.

How else but with a resurrected Hillary candidacy will the Democratic (sic) Party continue to serve its Capitalist masters? How will it (again) suppress the ever-intensifying grassroots effort to leverage it toward another New Deal?

And what of the so-called "CIA Democrats"? Are they not the perfect Praetorian Guard for a Hillary presidency?

Given the givens, what other strategic explanation for the lawsuit actually makes sense?

Which brings me to the purpose -- and therefore the form and content -- of Dispatches from Dystopia.

As its founder and editor, I do my best to avoid regurgitating the rigorously censored Mainstream Media stories by which we are deluged throughout our wakeful hours. In depressing fact, Mainstream Media -- the cabal of big-money corporations that own and control the U.S. Internet and most of the nation's newspapers, magazines, broadcasting and publishing facilities -- has become the Empire's private, for-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Just as we are assailed by privatized, for-profit prisons and dumbed down by privatized, for-profit education, so are we ensnared by the lies and disinformation spewed by privatized, for-profit propagandists. And because the Mainstream Media monopolies are owned by same One Percenters who own and control all U.S. governance, they have become simultaneously functioning mouthpieces both for our overlords and for their government vassals. The assertions of Mainstream Media and government spokespersons are thus mutually supportive if not identical.

But for now -- until the corporate/government process of censoring the Internet is complete -- we have an antidote. That antidote is a regularly published anthology of links to sources that contain the very information and analyses Mainstream Media denies us -- precisely the service Dispatches from Dystopia provides.

We need such an antidote because most of us today are so overworked and stressed out, we lack the time and focus necessary to perform the extensive web-surfing required for in-depth perusal of alternative media. That's why -- though I have been officially retired since 2005 -- I spend 40 or 50 hours each week scanning alternative news sites, collecting links to the most relevant articles I can find and then sharing these links in twice-weekly Dispatches anthologies. Their purpose -- my purpose -- is to use the skills and perspective of 55-plus years' experience as a professional editor, writer and photographer to Serve the People by providing access to information they might not have time to ferret out for themselves.

Thus too the Dispatches quickly readable form: a descriptive headline followed by a brief but telling passage lifted from the linked text. And the lifted passage is always less than 200 words, the length-limit imposed on reviewers by U.S, copyright law. To avoid any question of authorship, the lifted material is indicated both by italic body type and quotation marks. When the lifted material is followed by my own commentary, this too is plainly identified as "Comment."

Bottom line, if a breaking story gets widespread coverage by the Mainstream Media propaganda machine, you normally won't read about it here until more truthful reports are available.

*****

Evo Morales Damns U.S. as World's Worst Ever Threat to Freedom

"The biggest threat against freedom, against democracy, against Mother Earth and against multilateralism is the United States. I am not afraid to say this openly,"

"A distinct subset of evangelical Christians know that Donald Trump is bad news for the entire world—and they’re really, really excited about...signs in the heavens, the bloodshed of nations at Armageddon, the final destruction of non-believers in the winepress of God’s wrath... The tone is jovial, even smug, as if they’re discussing the plot of a popcorn flick that doesn’t affect them...Because in their world, it doesn’t—they’re going to be raptured...earth is just (their) place of trial and suffering before (their) final destination of heaven." See also: "One would think that cooler heads might inject a note of sanity before things get completely out of hand. But the opposite seems to be the case."Comment: it cannot be said too often that the JesuNazis' nightmarish yearning for the apocalypse is what makes the Trump/Pence Regime's tantrums of thermonuclear brinksmanship incalculably more dangerous than any other confrontations in human history. (See again my "Infinitely More Terrifying Than Cuban Missile Crisis.") Unfortunately too many of us continue to cower beneath blankets of denial in an imaginary realm where the looming JesuNazi tyranny and its probable apocalyptic outcome remain part of the so-called "unthinkable." But if we are to save ourselves from extinction, these terrible truths must be repeated until we the people awaken not just to the horrific magnitude of the threat but to the fact that socialism is literally our only salvation. (With thanks to TigerLille1 for sending me the "raptured" link.)

"Emmanuel Macron’s address to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday was one of the most belligerent public statements ever made by a French president. Hailing the unprovoked bombing of Syria on April 14 by Washington, London and Paris as a model for a new world order in the 21st century, Macron declared his support for US war threats against Iran, North Korea and beyond."

"The secretly taped audio recording, released here for the first time, reveals how senior Democratic officials have worked to crush competitive primaries and steer political resources, money, and other support to hand-picked candidates in key races across the country, long before the party publicly announces a preference. The invisible assistance boosts the preferred candidate in fundraising and endorsements, and then that fundraising success and those endorsements are used to justify national party support. Meanwhile, opponents of the party’s unspoken pick are driven into paranoia, wondering if they are merely imagining that unseen hands are working against them."

*****

Trump's DHS Has Torn More Than 700 Children from Their Families

"The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has separated more than 700 children, including infants, from their families at the US-Mexico border since October, according to a New York Times investigation. The Trump administration had declared previously that it was considering taking children away from parents as a deterrent to immigration."

*****

Capitalist: Why Cure a Disease When You Can Profit Off Its Perpetuation?

"According to reporting by Rewire.News, Catholic hospitals across the country are imposing dangerous and life-threatening mandates on their patients, including requiring fetal burial after a miscarriage and restricting access to contraception, abortion, fertility treatments and gender-affirming care for transgender patients. And now, right-wing politicians like Vice President Mike Pence are pushing to enshrine these dangerous practices into law. For more, we speak with Rewire investigative journalist Amy Littlefield."

*****

Examples of the Positive and Negative Aspects of U.S. Labor Unionism

"Teachers in Jersey City, New Jersey, voted April 19 to approve a deal by the Jersey City Education Association (JCEA), which was used to shut down the one-day March 16 strike by 4,000 teachers and school employees. The delay of a month was likely necessary to bully teachers and sell the deal, which did not meet their main demand to end soaring out-of-pocket medical costs under New Jersey’s health care plan known as Chapter 78."See also:"Within days of announcing the elimination of an entire shift and 1,500 jobs at the giant Lordstown, Ohio assembly plant, General Motors announced that its subsidiary, known as the Lordstown GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, will be hiring low-paid temporary workers under an agreement the United Auto Workers signed behind the backs of rank-and-file workers."And this:"For the first time in decades, union membership is on the rise among young people." Comment: a long-time union member myself (previously American Newspaper Guild, now National Writers Union), I have seen both the enormous good we do by organizing ourselves into unions and how the purpose of unionism is so often betrayed, far too frequently by entrenched interests within unions. However that betrayal is usually a two-way street, with the betrayers empowered by long periods of rank-and-file indifference and inactivity.

"The only wild population of endangered red wolves is unsustainable and could be wiped out within a decade after dwindling to a few dozen, government officials said in a report Tuesday. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review of the species' status estimates that only about 40 wolves remain in the wild in eastern North Carolina, down from a peak of about 120 a decade ago. 'The population cannot recover from their losses and overcome mortality resulting in a steadily declining population,' the review states, predicting these wild wolves could vanish in as little as a decade."

*****

Portland, Oregon Activists Protest Naming Navy Warship After Their City

"Activists from roughly 10 different local organizations gathered this morning to protest the naming of the Navy warship that docked in Portland over the weekend. The Portland Democratic Socialists of America planned the demonstration after learning that the ship would be named USS Portland, with April 21 being declared by Mayor Ted Wheeler as 'USS Portland Day.'"

*****

Democrats Embrace National Marijuana Legalization

"Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has introduced legislation that would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, a sign that the Democratic leadership is finally ready to align itself with a majority of voters and embrace marijuana reform ahead the 2018 midterm elections."Comment: remember this is an election year. It's what the Democrats do after the election that counts. And never, ever forget the monumental betrayal the Democrats dealt us as "change we can believe in."

*****

Lab Accident Spawns Plastic-Eating Enzyme

"Researchers in the UK and the U.S. have inadvertently engineered an enzyme that eats up plastic. The enzyme is able to digest PET (polyethylene terephthalate)—the same material used in the ubiquitous plastic bottle that’s clogging up landfills, coastlines and oceans around the world."Comment: Goddess grant the enzyme does not escape from the lab and begin consuming all plastic everywhere, our computer disks, our picnik supplies, flower pots, shower curtains, even the elastic that holds up our undies.

*****

Last Words: Once Again, Dogs Prove Themselves the Superior Species

"A17-year-old Australian Cattle Dog named Max saved the life of a young girl lost in the mountains of Queensland, Australia last week...(he) found his young human, settled her down, then sought out help despite being partially blind, totally deaf and...(even after human searchers had given up)...a dog (who) refused to stop looking."Comment: I love dogs. Love them dearly. Always have, always will. Indeed they are by far my favorite quadrupeds. And they have repaid my love by twice -- maybe three times -- saving my life. The first time was in 1942, when I was a toddler out for an evening walk with my father in Queens, a borough of New York City, and the lightening-fast reflexes of Lobo, our German Shepherd, rescued me from an eerily aggressive house cat that without provocation had pounced onto my head as we passed the stoop whereon he was crouching; Lobo literally bit the cat in half. The third time was in 1963, when I was a civil rights activist in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Brunhilda, my own German Shepherd, grabbed a murder-minded Ku Klux Klan hitman by the testicles as he was attempting to climb into my kitchen window and dragged him screaming to the ground. (The second time was the Maybe, Its circumstances, which occurred in Roanoke, Virginia on the Summer Solstice Eve of 1945, are less obvious. This was the day and night of madness and familial violence during which my mother's plan to take me to the top of Mill Mountain "to meet god" -- that is, to murder me, apparently in payment for a debt she believed she owed Satan -- was aborted by the unexpectedly early return of my father from a wartime work-related conference. But it was our English Setter Cocoa whose refusal to be confined in the basement had repeatedly delayed our departure until my father's arrival.) Knowing and respecting canine insight and intelligence as I have learned to do both from my own interactions with dogs and from the hundreds of hero-dog stories I have read (and occasionally reported) as a journalist, I strongly suspect Cocoa's behavior was not the coincidence it seemed. Indeed I sometimes wonder if perhaps the translators of the Bible were dyslexics, that in cosmic truth our one truly protective, loving and forgiving deity is Dog, not God. (With thanks to TigerLille1 for the link to the short but wonderful story of how Max saved the life of Aurora.)

21 April 2018

"...capital’s capacity to produce constantly outstrips the capacity of consumers to consume, as these very consumers are, in the main, the very workers whose wages are driven down, or who are made redundant altogether, by improved technology. Ultimately, this results in a crisis of overproduction, with markets glutted, and workers thrown out of work in their millions...Increasingly unable to rely on economic coercion alone to keep countries within its ‘sphere of influence...the West have been turning more and more to military force. Indeed, the US, UK and France have been permanently at war since the eve of the new millennium – starting with Yugoslavia, through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen (to say nothing of proxy wars such as that in the Congo, or the ‘drone wars’ waged in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere). In each case, the aim has been the same – to thwart the possibility of independent development..."

*****

North Korea Says It's Suspending Nuke Tests, Missile Launches

"North Korea announced yesterday it had suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests and plans to close its northern nuclear test site. It was the latest in a series of concessions offered by Pyongyang in the lead-up to a summit scheduled next Friday between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and a later summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump."See also: "The decision of Washington, London and Paris to launch missile strike against Syria on April 9, risking a direct military clash with Russian forces in the country, is reverberating internationally. As the Trump administration prepares for talks with North Korean President Kim Jong Un over his country’s nuclear program, it is inflaming military tensions in East Asia."

*****

Cuba's New President Pledges to Defend Socialism

"Cuba's new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, began his term on Thursday with a promise to defend the socialist revolution led by the Castro brothers since 1959, giving a sober speech that also emphasized the need to modernize the island's economy."

"Wednesday’s criminal referral by 11 House Republicans of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as several former and serving top FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials is a giant step toward a Constitutional crisis...With no attention from corporate media, the referral was sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah John Huber."

*****

Democratic (sic) Betrayal I: Heitkamp Ensures Pompeo Confirmation

"Flouting urgent demands by anti-war groups, environmentalists, and LGBTQ rights organizations to reject Mike Pompeo over his lengthy record of warmongering and bigotry, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) on Thursday became the first Democrat to declare her support for President Donald Trump's secretary of state pick. The announcement...ensures that Pompeo will become America's top diplomat—as he likely only needs one Democratic vote to make it through the Senate—and immediately drew criticism from progressives who have been pressuring Democrats to block his confirmation."

*****

Democratic (sic) Betrayal II: Manchin Helps Kill Anti-Racism Protocol

"In a 'precedent-shattering' 51-47 vote on Wednesday that could set the stage for the GOP to kill a slew of longstanding consumer and environmental regulations, Senate Republicans—joined by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—approved a measure to repeal a 2013... guidance aimed at protecting minorities from auto lending discrimination...'This may end up being the most vicious hardball escalation and norm-breaking of Trump's first two years.'"

"As the fourth Friday of popular protests in the besieged Gaza Strip came to a close, Israeli forces had killed four Palestinians, including a 15-year-old who was shot in the head."See also:"A coalition of community organisations in the city of Durham in the U.S. state of North Carolina has successfully lobbied the city council to ban training and exchanges between Durham's police department and the Israeli military...the first US city to ever explicitly take such measure...(against) the militarisation of police forces around the country."Comment: knowing how the Israelis routinely slaughter Palestinians, I cannot but wonder to what extent training by Israeli Army war criminals contributes to the skyrocketing incidence of murders committed by U.S. cops.

"Brazil’s government declared Monday that human rights activist Marielle Franco was 'very likely' killed by...Rio de Janeiro’s militias...whose members are former police officers or active and corrupted officers, controlling large parts of the city...Franco was renown for openly denouncing their activities, defending the rights of the poor communities of Rio de Janeiro against police brutality and corruption."

*****

Black Motorist Killed by Cops for Awaiting Walmart-Shopping Friends

"Barstow, Calif., police officers fired what sounded like more than 30 bullets into a car in Walmart’s parking lot, killing Diante 'Butchie' Yarber, 26, and shooting two other passengers, including 23-year-old Marian Tafoya who was critically wounded...Yarber, the father of three girls, ages 9, 7, and 1, drove his cousin and friends to a local Walmart. Barstow police claim they were responding to a call about a 'suspicious' vehicle in the parking lot...(and opened fire) when they spotted Yarber waiting in a black Mustang for his passengers to return to the car."

After struggling for nearly seven months to rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, which was destroyed by Hurricane Maria, the U.S. territory experienced an island-wide blackout on Wednesday—its first since the storm struck last September. As meteorologist Eric Holthaus put it, "This is still a humanitarian emergency."

*****

Death-by-Monopoly of Hungarian Press Freedom Bodes Ill for U.S.

"Hungary’s far-right governing party, Fidesz, won a crushing victory in national elections, further strengthening Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s tight grip on power. Orbán has gradually eroded Hungary’s independent press since he took office in 2010. His latest win is all but a death knell." Comment: the linked report deftly avoids the issue, but the war on media independence waged by the U.S. One Percent and its vassals employs the same strategy and tactics as Orban is employing in Hungary and is creating the same information vacuum. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.

"...in at least 21 states, pot arrests went up from 2014 to 2016, even as weed has been legalized and decriminalized in other states and cities. Complete data were not available for Florida, Illinois, Alabama, and Washington, D.C."

*****

A Photographer Kills Himself in King County Jail

"It was clear that Michael Clinard was in a bad way long before that fatal day last July in the King County Jail. It was clear even before a Bothell municipal court judge remanded him into custody for repeatedly violating a domestic violence protection order and he made a grim vow. 'I won’t live that long,' Clinard shouted at the judge, according to a prosecutor’s court filing. 'I don’t intend to live past another two weeks. You just signed my death warrant, bitch!'...Clinard, a photographer who was once a rising star on the local and national magazine scenes, made good on his threat..."

*****

Mind Control Data Mysteriously Leaked to Investigative Reporter

"The government has all kinds of secrets, but only a true conspiracy theorist might suspect that 'psycho-electric weapons' are one of them. So it's odd that MuckRock, a news organization that specializes in filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with state and federal government bodies, received mysterious documents about mind control, seemingly by accident."

*****

Are Tacoma's New "Opportunity Zones" Really Gentrification Targets?

"Gov. Jay Inslee today approved six census tracts in Tacoma for Opportunity Zone status, allowing for special federal tax breaks encouraging development and job creation."See also:"...there is a risk that instead of helping residents of poor neighborhoods, the tax break will end up displacing them or simply provide benefits to developers investing in already-gentrifying areas." Comment: previous incarnations of these "Opportunity Zones" exempted bosses from minimum wage requirements. Hence I checked to see if these new zones contained the same waiver. Apparently they do not -- but knowing the bottomless treachery of our overlords, I suggest staying tuned, as I promise to investigate further.

*****

Barbara Bush Obituary: In This Case It's Necessary to Speak Ill of the Dead

"How wicked (was) Barbara Bush?... Refresh your memory with this quote on Good Morning America, dismissing the escalating body count of American soldiers in Iraq. 'Why should we hear about body bags and deaths and how many,' the Presidential Mother snapped. 'It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?'"

"Finally (at the end of the program) this is your brain on capitalism. Dr. Harriet Fraad is a mental health expert as well as a political radical. She sees first hand what capitalism does to our mental health – how the psychology of the system shapes everything from our personal relationships to mass shootings." Quoth Dr. Fraad: "we didn't know Gloria Steinem was a CIA agent." Comment: an outstanding interview by Eleanor Goldfield.

20 April 2018

"They had long been in favor of ensuring this country’s 'unchallenged supremacy' by building its already staggering military into a force beyond compare...It was to be a Pax Americana planet for the ages...'a position of unparalleled military strength'...a single, unparalleled military power 'beyond challenge'... a dream of dominion that once would have been left to 'Evil Empires' or madmen (or the truly, truly bad guys in Hollywood movies). But in the world as they imagined it then, the one in which only that 'sole' superpower stood tall, how easy it proved to imagine a Great Game with just a single player and an eternal arms race of one." See also:"The fading empire refuses to accept the humiliation of defeat of its jihadist proxies, the head-cutters Washington and Saudi Arabia have nurtured as a foreign terror legion since deploying them against a leftist government in Afghanistan and its Soviet ally almost 40 years ago." Comment: ultimately, and unabashedly in the tradition of Hitler and Bonaparte, the "New American Century" is just another genocidal effort by another morally imbecilic conqueror, in this case a cabal of Capitalists and their vassals rather than one Capitalist-anointed tyrant.

*****

Attack on Syria Did Not Slake Imperial Warmongers' Blood Lust

"Within hours of the strikes, US and European newspapers began pumping out editorials demanding a further escalation of the war for regime-change in Syria....while tactical considerations led the United States to...(avoid) a full-scale assault that would have led to a shooting war with Iranian and Russian forces, the launching of such an onslaught is only a matter of time. The fact that such a conflict could have cataclysmic consequences for humanity will not deter the imperialist powers from waging it." See also: "Considering the just inflicted U.S. insult to Russia by its attack in Syria, Moscow may well choose to respond by hitting U.S. interests in a very different location, where it enjoys logistical superiority and also where the counter-strike may be less likely to escalate to direct crossing of swords and the unthinkable—possible nuclear war."

*****

International Study Damns U.S. as World's Most Corrupt Industrial Nation

"No other 'democracy' in the developed world comes close to the United States when it comes to giving big-money donors unregulated power in their national electoral processes...this plutocratic campaign finance free-for-all is why the Electoral Integrity Project (a research undertaking funded by the Australian Research Council with a team of researchers based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University) ranks the democratic election integrity of U.S. elections below that of all 19 North and Western European democracies and also below that of 10 other nations in the Americas (Costa Rica, Uruguay, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Jamaica, Grenada, Argentina, Barbados and Peru), 10 nations in Central and Eastern Europe, nine Asian-Pacific countries, two countries in the Middle East (Israel and Tunisia) and six African nations...dead last among 'Western democracies.'" Comment: now at last we're being recognized for our true exceptionalism. (Longtime suspicions emphatically confirmed.)

"On April 11, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, announced that he was betraying a 55% majority of Burlington voters and a 75% majority of his city council that had opposed basing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at the Burlington Airport in South Burlington...The third-term Democratic mayor has now asked the Air Force to impose its deafening fighter-bomber on a neighboring city for no cogently articulated reason, following a process bereft of integrity, rigor, or honor." Comment:note that Vermont's Congressional delegates, including Sanders, are backing the mayor in his defiance of popular will: another telling example of how "American Democracy" is the biggest Big Lie in human history.

"Two leading political figures from the U.S. and Canada, who have boasted about the need to fight climate change, are now under fire for being climate change hypocrites: saying they care about the climate, but allowing drilling and fossil fuel infrastructure to be built anyway."

*****

Fueled by Climate Change, the U.S. Western Desert Expands Eastward

"...scientists are looking again at the 100th meridian...They confirm that the divide has turned out to be very real, as reflected by population and agriculture on opposite sides. They say also that the line appears to be slowly moving eastward, due to climate change...Data collected since about 1980 suggests that the statistical divide between humid and arid has now shifted closer to the 98th meridian, some 140 miles east. (In Texas, this would move it roughly from Abilene to Fort Worth.)" With thanks to TigerLille1 for spotting the story and emailing me the link.

*****

Activist Immolates Himself to Protest Capitalism's War on the Environment

"As right-wing advocacy groups embark on yet another campaign to sell the American public on the GOP's corporate-friendly tax law that President Donald Trump insisted would sell itself, a new Gallup poll published Monday found that the tax cuts remain 'very unpopular,' with just 39 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving."

*****

JesuNazi Support for Trump Soars Despite Stormy Scandal

"The most recent Pew polls suggest that President Donald Trump...has grown his support (amongst white Evangelicals) since the Stormy Daniels story took hold...With his white evangelical support... (slumping to) 61 percent in December, Trump now enjoys 78 percent support, just a shade beneath the support he won from white evangelicals on Election Day...(but) this should be no surprise at all...(because) the history and sexual politics of evangelicalism in America fit well with Donald Trump and his message."Comment: precisely as the linked text states, "White evangelicals, particularly in the South, long ago lined up their party with 'family values,' which above all else has meant patriarchy." And what is patriarchy? Think for a moment. Is it not human society constructed with fear, hatred and contempt of femaleness as its core principle? Thus patriarchy wages its war of misogyny against any expression of femaleness it can identify, whether a single girl-child or our Mother Earth herself. With thanks to TigerLille1 for sending me the link.

"One in three Americans has a debt that has been turned over to a private collection agency. One in five Americans has unpaid medical bills that have gone into collection...A Texas man was arrested by seven or eight U.S. Marshals for failure to appear in court. The original $2,500 federal student loan he obtained in 1983 to pay for trucking school had ballooned to $12,000 with interest and fees. The man was...unable to appear in court: he had just undergone open-heart surgery. Had he been able to appear, it would still have been unable to pay. He was retired and subsisting on Social Security and disability..."See also:"Incarceration is, probably, the starkest form of commodification where simply warehousing flesh brings a return."Comment: read as one, the two linked reports are useful in helping us recognize how the JesuNazism into which U.S. Capitalism is maturing includes resurrected forms of the serfdom that defined the manorial economy of the Middle Ages and the plantation slavery that defined the antebellum South. Unfortunately Alan Nasser buried the lead of his "Texas man" story, apparently to force us to read 15 paragraphs of advocacy before we get to the information promised by his story's headline. Fortunately though the Scroll function gets us quickly to the subtitle "The Criminalization of Private Debt," which is where the promised disclosures begin. As to the report linked via "Warehousing flesh," it is much better organized and written. It's source is a piece by Susan Roberts entitled "Uses of the Poor," which reveals the myriad, typically malicious ways the Capitalists profit from our poverty. Both reports document how our morally imbecilic, Ayn Rand-minded overlords (redundancy employed for emphasis) have added a new, college-level route to the slave pens via the school-to-prison pipeline.

"...Alejandra Pablo (of) the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH)...(works toward) a world where no woman fears accessing health care at her local clinic because of immigration raids; a world where families aren't torn apart by a broken immigration system; where all people can exercise decisions about family formation and abortion without stigma, shame or coercion...(but) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took Alejandra into custody, denied her a bond hearing, and whisked her (far) away from her loved ones... (to imprisonment in) Eloy Detention Center in Southern Arizona, one of the deadliest detention centers in the US."See also: "Riding high off two recent widely denounced deportations that ripped apart immigrant families who have called the U.S. home for decades, acting ICE director Thomas Homan boasted at a conference on Wednesday that he has really begun 'enjoying' his role in carrying out President Donald Trump's racist mass deportation agenda."Comment: Though the linked report on Ms. Pablo fails to tell us where she was arrested, the implication is she was seized in Virginia and then transported in chains to Arizona -- which, if that is indeed what happened, would exemplify the Gestapo-minded ICE practice of inflicting maximum geographical isolation on detainees by sending them to concentration camps as far as possible from their comrades, families, friends and homes.

"The strike by tens of thousands of Oklahoma teachers...did not win their demands for significantly increased wages and the restoration of school funding, which has been cut by nearly 30 percent over the last decade...like the nine-day strike in West Virginia, the walkout of Oklahoma teachers was betrayed by the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and their state affiliates in Oklahoma." See also:"...class has always mattered far more in our public and private lives than our (propaganda) would allow."Comment: telling examples of how the long-ruling cabal of Democratic (sic) Party officials and Democrat-owned union officials join hands with the Republicans to preserve Capitalism and facilitate the continued savaging of the Working Class. In other words, "business as usual."

"In this interview with Truthout, (scott) crow discusses his experience with armed self-defense, the current gun control debate, the student-led protests on gun control, the militarization of police, the media framing of police killings and the military-industrial complex."Note: the all-lower-case spelling of scott crow's name is not a typographical error; it is the form demanded by crow himself.

"While our nation once fought a war against poverty, now we wage a war on the poor. The richest 1% in our country own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined, tightening their grip on political power to shape labor, tax, healthcare and campaign finance policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many. A full 60% more Americans now live below the official poverty line than in 1968..Now, 50 years after leaders of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign declared silence was betrayal, we are coming together to break the silence and tell the truth about the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and our distorted moral narrative." Comment: the murder of the New Deal proves Capitalism cannot be reformed. Thus -- the campaign's leadership's implicitly pro-Capitalist bias not withstanding -- it should be obvious the only way the Poor People's Campaign will achieve its humanitarian goals is by revolution.

*****

Wealth, Greed and Malice of U.S. Plutocrats Soar to All-Time Highs

"Across the United States, workers are being told by Democrats and Republicans alike that there is 'no money' for decent wages, pensions or health care. Teachers from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and other states are rebelling against near-poverty wages and years of school cuts only to be told by the politicians and union leaders that their demands are 'unrealistic' and cannot be met. But a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are wallowing in record levels of wealth."

"Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, wants to reverse a longstanding practice of granting asylum to refugees running from domestic and sexual violence...sending thousands of women back to potentially violent deaths. But Sessions does not have the final say...If a huge outcry breaks out in response to this racist, sexist, and plainly violent plan to turn away domestic and sexual violence survivors, we can stop this administration from going through with it. Will you add your name to protect survivors who need asylum?"Thanks again to Tigerlille1, though I have long been on the UV mailing list.

*****

Last Words: Why Today's Tyranny Needs a Better Name Than "Fascism."

While the term "fascism" accurately describes the tyrannical governance essential to maintain Capitalism, what assails us today is nevertheless a uniquely 21st Century form of fascism.

In the United States, as if to prove the Empire's master-race claims of exceptionalism, fascism has uniquely bonded with Christianity to produce what I have labeled "JesuNazism."

Meanwhile the most definitive aspect of present-day fascism's uniqueness, JesuNazi or otherwise, is how it rejects the better-living-through-tyranny claims of the older fascisms. Instead it focuses the zero-tolerance brutality of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Batista, Pinochet et al not just on its declared targets (e.g., African-Americans, Hispanics, First Nations Peoples, Jews, Roma, Muslims etc. ad nauseam), but on any and all of us who happen to be its subjects.

Embracing an economic agenda that duplicates the psychodynamics of serfdom and slavery, today's fascism thus goes further than any modern ideology -- and possibly further than any ideology in our species' history -- toward openly declaring that we the people are naught but clay to be modeled into whatever servile forms our divine-right overlords choose.

While the earlier forms of fascism implicitly rationalized the same magnitude of subjugation, their oppressive natures were typically hidden behind brilliantly conceived propaganda. Moreover the propaganda was confirmed as "truth" by economic measures that -- as in pre-war Nazi Germany's response to the Great Depression -- pacified its Working Class and petite bourgeois citizens with incomes just comfortable enough to bribe them to submission. This is how both Mussolini and Hitler achieved and sustained power until they were ousted by fascism's reversals during World War II.

But today's fascism offers no such economic attractions. The economic security programs that genuinely improved the lot of fascism's many supporters in Depression Era Germany, Italy or Spain have no equivalent in today's United States. Even when such programs are promised, the bootheel-on-the-mouth betrayal we experienced thanks to Obama's precedent-setting Big Lie of "change we can believe in" has taught us that Capitalism is forever done with any such humanitarian improvements.

Whether we verbalize it or not, the defining element in the individual and collective consciousness of today's 99 Percent is that we who are not part of the One Percent or its vassalage are now and forever well and truly fucked.

Which leads immediately to the question of "why the growing popularity of fascism if its failure too is deemed inevitable?" The short answer, I believe, is that even in a realm of economic hopelessness, fascism provides the downtrodden with both a rationale for hatred and a mechanism for its expression. The rationale is provided by the malicious targeting of minorities as undesirables. The mechanism is that of the lynch mob or the pogrom or its modern equivalents. Its murderous momentum is an expression of the species-damning fact -- proven beyond argument by the present state of the world -- that most humans despite the magnitude of their sufferings would rather torture scapegoats than rise in rebellion against the causes of their misery.

And it is this distinction -- the difference between (yesterday's) fascism as a (woefully misconceived) effort at self and societal improvement versus (today's) fascism as implicit confirmation of one's own hopelessness and helplessness -- that compels me to suggest we need an entirely new term to describe what it is.

However, if such a new term is to stick, it must be, in equal measures, emotionally compelling and phenomenologically accurate. Indeed it must be so compelling and so accurate it becomes by its own appropriateness a focal-point around which to mobilize genuine mass resistance, precisely as the terms "Nazi" or "fascist" did during the first half of the 20th Century. But now nearly 70 years later, these labels fail in this regard because they omit the resurrections of serfdom and slavery that are central to fascism's present-day form.

That said, I have no suggestions for so functional a replacement noun. The best I have done so far is "JesuNazi" (which I think is both incisively accurate and emotionally compelling but lacks the essential completeness and completion that would be be provided by references to serfdom and slavery). Hence I am tossing this brief essay out into the electronic cosmos in the hope others more compulsively creative than I might take up the task it defines as essential.